Tuesday 26 September 2000 21.26 EDT
First published on Tuesday 26 September 2000 21.26 EDT

They came with balloons and globes, samba and trumpets, a rainbow collective of political causes from at least 30 countries across Europe. Socialists were to march with ecologists, old communists with new democrats, anarchists with unionists, and anti-corporates with extremists and dreamers. The common language was to be direct action.

It was billed as the first pan-European protest against global capitalism, the biggest political party against globalisation since Seattle, and the first major riposte to the west's triumph over communism. But within an hour of up to 15,000 people rallying in Peace Square, the battle of Prague was inevitable.

The protest coordinators had divided the groups into three - red, blue and yellow - with the intention of forming a human chain around the former communist centre of culture where the World Bank meetings were being held. The 11,000 Czech police, primed by the FBI and European police forces, had no intention of letting them anywhere near the hall.

By 11.30am the marchers had set off in three directions. The Italian Ya Bastas , widely regarded by the protesters as the most disciplined, stylish and effective of all Europe s direct-action groups, were the obvious choice for a direct assault over "suicide bridge", a four-lane highway leading almost directly to the centre.

Leading the yellow march of 700 protesters in lines of 30, the Ya Bastas - meaning "enough" - linked arms, carried tyres and plastic shields and protected themselves with gas masks. Behind them came several thousand unionists and international socialists, as well as groups from Turkey, Greece, Spain and France.

Around 460 metres from the bridge, 800 metres from the conference centre, they halted. As expected, the bridge was blocked by armoured personnel carriers, several hundred riot police and water cannon. The police had their own banners, exhorting the protesters in three languages to disperse.

Fat chance. A Ya Basta representative came forward and held an impromptu press conference. "This is a historic moment," he declared. "The IMF/World Bank needs tanks and guns to defend itself from the poorest in the world. We are going to take civil action on behalf of the millions and millions of starving, the billions of poor who earn less than $2 [£1.40] a day, whom the IMF and World Bank are ignoring or consigning to slavery."

The Ya Basta activists strutted forward through a line of international media. They moved crash barriers and charged the police, breaking every 10 minutes for drinks. Back they came, the police batting them off with their shields. Ya Basta retreated, took a run at the police and then used the crowd barriers as battering rams. Scuffles broke out. Ya Basta then tried to use balloons, launching more than 500 at the police and running underneath them. The police lines held, with tear gas and batons used sporadically. In two hours the police had retreated 1.5 metres and many thousands of protesters were backed up for 12 blocks or so.

Meanwhile the red march, led by carnivalistas and samba groups, was circling round the conference centre and trying to approach it from the south-west. The march of at least 3,000 people included British veterans of Twyford Down and the June 18 city riots, but was peppered by hardcore activists from many countries.

They had taken the police and several bankers by surprise. Two Japanese financiers caught up in the march had to be whisked into a hotel by bodyguards.

Activists sang and tried to defuse the so-far minor confrontations with humour and "tactical frivolity". The y met no resistance for more than an hour, and got to within 200 metres of the centre before the police intervened with tear gas, water cannon and percussion grenades. Scuffles broke out as protesters continued to move forward, throwing samba rattles at police.

The hard core then moved in and police hit them with batons, the protesters responding by hurling back banners and bottles . The police continued to push back activists, splitting the group in two.

Meanwhile the third march of another 2,000-3,000 people, led by the international socialists, the British group Reclaim the Streets, feminist anarchists and old socialist revolutionaries had circled west and south. They tried repeatedly to get up the cobbled streets to the centre but were met by lines of riot police and troops. However, one group got to within 50 metres of the centre, with a few people dodging through the official lines.

Jakob, a German student dressed in a suit and and Kate Evans from Yorkshire, wearing a silver cocktail dress with pink tail feathers, climbed over roofs and reached the centre, spending, they said, 45 minutes milling with delegates.

Grenades

"I had a great chat with a man from the Royal Canadian Mint and told him what we were doing. He said he respected people's rights to protest as long as they did not go 'too far'. I cannot believe that nobody challenged me. All I did was ladder my tights," Ms Evans said.

Down the hill the battles were becoming fiercer, with police letting off thousands of volleys of percussion grenades, tear gas drifting through the streets and protesters hurling stones. Almost every shop and front door had been barricaded, with messages from residents pleading with protesters not to smash windows.

Jan Urban, a Czech dissident who was one of the leading figures during the revolt against the communists in 1989, was begging the protesters to calm down. "It s going to get far worse than this," a protester replied.

With the city streets empty of residents, many watched the goings-on from the safety of their flats. Others took their own direct action - one old man handing out stones to protesters, and a woman hurling buckets of water on to riot police.

The scale of the riots and the fact that the police had resorted to tactics not seen since the communist era shook the Czechs. "We were warned, but I never thought this would happen - what can we say?" said one driver.

Later in the afternoon, with barricades burning and the police continuing to push people away from the conference centre, there were reports of petrol bombs being thrown by protesters, and of police throwing back large rocks. A Polish man was reportedly in a coma last night.

What started as a carnival had turned into one of Europe's worst riots in years.